As McCain Fakes Right, Politico Hyperventilates

Writing for Politico, David Catanese ominously declares "McCain pays heavy price for reelection."  Granted, he hasn't actually been reelected yet, but recent polling says J.D. Hayworth needs a miracle.  So what was this heavy price?  McCain spent $20 million on the primary campaign, but he'll have to spend five times that to match what Bloomberg paid to play mayor of New York City. In the grand scheme of things, McCain's spending is high, but not unheard of.

As Catanese reveals, it's not "the $20 million he’s spent already this election or the scorched earth campaign that he’s run. Rather, it’s the choices he’s made and the positions he’s embraced — and what it reveals about him — that could make for a complicated final chapter in his political biography. .... Once the sponsor of comprehensive immigration reform with the late Sen. Ted Kennedy — a stance that hurt him with conservatives — McCain moved in a different direction this year. He switched his emphasis this summer to border security, [and] embraced Arizona’s controversial hard-line immigration law."

In other words, Catanese is upset because McCain has actually started acting like a Conservative.  Further, McCain is defending the policy decisions of his home state and his constituents rather than continuing to spit in their faces with amnesty bills.  Clearly, we can't have that.  In reality, if I could believe Catanese histrionics were justified, then I might actually support McCain.  Unfortunately, I feel he is among the most unreliable "Conservative" politicians on the market.  (Just a tip: if Liberals love you, you're doing it wrong.)

John McCain is 73.  At the completion of his next Senate term, he would be 79.  Though it's possible he might run again, it is highly unlikely.  As such, we should treat McCain' reelection as a six-year-long lame-duck session.  A more accurate title for the Catanese's Politico article would have been "Conservatism to pay heavy price with McCain reelection."

[print_link]